have saved thousands of dollars to the State; I commend their system to their successors.

THE STATE CHILD WELFARE DEPARTMENT

The people of the State of Alabama have declared themselves in favor of giving every child in the commonwealth opportunity for full growth into useful and self-supporting citizenship.

Through decisions of the Supreme Court of Alabama run two well established principles of law: first, that a court of chancery sitting as the State's lawful over-guardian will do whatever is necessary to be done for the welfare of any child brougt before it; second, that when the court comes to exercise this function, all other rights and interests are held to be secondary to those of the child.

The Legislature of Alabama, responding to the expressed wishes of the people, established a Department of State to promote the development of child care in conformity with the two principles so often declared by the court.

The title of the act in itself expresses its whole purpose: "That in order that the State may more effectively exercise the duty and obligations which it owes to its minor children, who, for any cause are in need of its care and protection, there is hereby created and established a Child Welfare Department * *which shall have and exercise the several powers, functions, and other duties inherent in the State for promoting the welfare of such children."

*

While the duties of the Departments are manifold, the fundamental principles underlying the whole program of work are prevention and reconstruction.

Its present activities are divided into four divisions, namely, Child Labor Law Enforcement, Visitation of Child-Caring Institutions, Juvenile Courts and Extention, and Children's Aid and Home Finding.

I wish to call your attention to the fact that the present Director, Mrs. A. M. Tunstall, has been in office only five months, as the first part of the fiscal year 1925-26 was under the direction of Miss Virginia B. Handley, who resigned to get married.

CHILD LABOR LAW ENFORCEMENT

Alabama is one of fourteen states in the Union having a child labor law which meets the standards prescribed by the last Federal child labor law. It is not the intention of the law to prohibit children's work, but to avoid child labor in Alabama and to keep children in school. The keynote of the law is better training for children before they go to work. This training is absolutely

necessary, if, in the future, we are to have strong men and women, well matured in mind and body, and able to carry on the work of the world.

Eight years ago the educational requirements of the Alabama child labor law were 60 days in school for the school year. The requirements have gradually moved up until today the completion of the 6th grade is necessary before a child can leave school and enter industry. The scholastic year of 1919-20 showed that 30 per cent of the children entering industry that year had only attended school 120 days and could not write their names legibly. Provisions for the completion of the 6th grade only became effective September 1, 1926. The records of the certificates for the year 1925-26 show that 31 per cent of the children employed had completed the 5th grade, 28 per cent of the 6th grade, 17 per cent of the 7th grade, and 24 per cent of the 8th grade. Illiteracy among children leaving school to go to work is disappearing in Alabama. Of the 16 year olds who went to work the last fiscal year, 31 per cent had completed the 8th grade.

Physical fitness for the work to be undertaken by the child is prescribed, and no child under sixteen is permitted to work more than eight hours a day. Boys under sixteen selling newspapers must be known to be regular attendants at school. The inspectors of the Department enforce all these measures.

At least three child labor inspectors are needed to do the field work of the Child labor Division. The Division now has only two. These inspectors spend about two-thirds of their time in the work of inspecting those establishments in the state where children are employed or likely to be employed. The remaining one-third of their time is spent in the office doing such clerical work as is involved in record-keeping, following up inspections by correspondence, etc. A minimum of three inspections annually is made of all establishments where children are usually employed. From one to two inspections annually are made of other establishments where children are likely to be employed.

Approximately 300 manufacturing establishments, 98 of which are cotton mills, were inspected from one to three times during the year, making a total of about 500 inspections of manufacturing establishments only. Nearly 520 miscellaneous establishments, such as business offices, billard halls, cafes, drug stores, groceries, mercantile establishments, telegraph offices, repair shops, theatres, and like places, were inspected, making about 1,100 miscellaneous inspections, and a total of about 1,600 inspections for the year 1925-26. In addition to this 411 homes were visited, 182 visits to issuing officers and 257 visits to other officials, making a total of 850 visits, were made. To do this, the two inspectors traveled 18.114 miles, spending 364 days in the field and 181 days in the office.

In making inspections of establishments, the inspectors visit the homes of many children found in employment, whose ages may be doubtful, to examine evidences of age which may be in the possession of the parents. Approximately five hundred home visits are made annually.

The heart of child labor law enforcement is in the correct issuance of the permit to leave school and enter industry which is given to the child by the superintendent of schools. The provisions of the law made necessary the use of a number of blank forms, and the law further provides that all forms used in the issuance of certificates be supplied by the Child Welfare Department, also copies of laws and schedules of hours for employment must be furnished. In addition, a small amount of literature for publicity is distributed annually.

INSTITUTION DIVISION

The main work in child-caring institutions has to do with the promotion of better standards, the rendering of all assistance possible to those in charge of institutions, particularly in determining where children come from, where they go when they pass out and the supervision of the last named group. It is the aim of the Department to go back of all institutions and make every possible effort to mend weak or broken homes before the children of such homes are unloaded on society for maintenance and education.

Julia Lathrop, first chief of the United States Children's Bureau, has said: "No child should be removed from its own home unless it is impossible to make the home safe for the child or his continuance in the home safe for the community."

An attempt to put this principle into practice is indicated by the combined efforts of the County Superintendents of Child Welfare, where there are such, the Visitor of the Institution Division, and the Extension Secretary of the State Child Welfare Department. In studies made of children's cases adjusted by county workers with the assistance of officers from the State Department, it is shown that during the last fiscal year Houston County saved to itself 69 children of 12 families; Covington County, 33 children of 11 families; Walker County, 70 children of 21 families; Etowah County, 19 Children of 9 families.

The workers of the Child Welfare Department and those people connected with institutions know full well that the time has not come in Alabama when the Institutions do not have a distinct service to perform. For hundreds of children there is at present no other refuge. Further, there is, there always may be, a certain type of child which only the institutions can save, but more emphasis must be placed on the home the preservation of the

home when possible, and the placing of children really placeable in foster homes.

The promise of the present educational program in this particular was clearly indicated when a superintendent of a child caring institution in Alabama was asked to name what he thought to be the ideal institution for a child. Like a flash, the answer rang out: "The Home!"

He knows that, for the present, institutional care in hundreds of cases is necessary. His ideal is the home!

And for the present, the institutions need the support of their patrons more sorely than ever before because the institutions are undertaking bigger and better jobs.

There are today 20 institutions caring for children in Alabama, and a number of so called Emergency Homes, which the Department Visitor advises and assists in every way possible to promote right standards of work in child care.

Perhaps the most outstanding service rendered the institutions by the Visitor from the Child Welfare Department has been the mental classification of problem children-a service the Department is proud to be able to render through its well-trained worker.

JUVENILE COURT OF EXTENSION DIVISION

Efforts to assist a destitute mother to keep her children or to force a deserting father to assume his natural obligations, lead the Department worker directly into the juvenile courts of the state. The law provides that the department shall promote the development of such agencies, advising with the judges and supervising the probation officers. The plan is to make the juvenile courts the central social agencies in children's matters. They are to be strengthened and made able to cope with difficult problems. They must seek and secure the hearty and cordial cooperation of every public and private agency in the community. They must' become a part of a broad-gauged, well-coordinated welfare system which undertakes to build around the life of the child every possible influence for good and lead him steadily along the way to a self-supporting, self-respecting citizenship.

The Department has been assiged definite duties in the juvenile courts of the 67 counties of the State, and also assigned the difficult but constructive task of studying conditions throughout the counties and of making known to the citizenship of the State such causes of dependency and neglect which may be discovered. The 1923 session of the Legislature enacted a very excellent juvenile court law amending the Act passed in 1915 which applies to all counties of the State not having special acts. There are three such counties, namely, Mobile, Montgomery and Jefferson.

In addition to this measure a law was enacted which makes permissible the organization of county boards of child welfare. This was done for the obvious purpose of permitting county courts of commissioners or boards of revenue, and boards of education to combine their interests and employ a county welfare worker whose duty it shall be to serve the juvenile court as probation officer and the schools as attendance officer. This effort to effect county organization for the purpose of meeting county child welfare problems in their local communities represents without doubt one of the most forward steps ever taken by the State of Alabama.

There are fourteen counties in the State today having organized juvenile courts or county welfare boards. They are as follows: Calhoun, Coffee, Covington, Dallas, Etowah, Hale, Houston, Jefferson, Lee, Mobile, Montgomery, Shelby, Tuscaloosa and Walker.

CHILDREN'S AID DIVISION

The Children's Aid Division is in reality an extension of service offered the juvenile courts in the 67 counties. It undertakes for the entire state, as it should, the placing of homeless children in good homes and the working out of ways and means. by which destitute mothers and their children may be saved to each other when there are no local family welfare units in the community or county to serve such families-seeking first in all cases the preservation of the family unit.

All the states in the Union today except six (and Alabama is one of the six) make provisions for helping worthy mothers to keep their children in their own homes.

But in Alabama there are no provisions on our statute books for assisting children of destitute mothers by means of funds from either the state or county treasuries, except by commitment to almshouses. Outdoor relief (that is, public money appropriated directly to the family) is prohibited in all counties operating almshouses. In other words, destitute children must be thrust into the county almshouses, if the county has such an institution and most of them have, before assistance can be furnished by the county. The burden of the work of this kind must be assumed largely by the Children's Aid Division.

The State Child Welfare Department is committed to the principle that the home is the best place for the child. The Department proceeds upon the theory that destitution in a child's home brought about by death, or desertion, or other causes, and through no fault of the child, should not be the cause for breaking up the home. On the other hand, if there exists no possibility of rehabilitating the home, or if there is no home, the Department